The rise of rounded roles in marketing.

So excited to bring you the news:

I am LIVE on YouTube.

This channel is my attempt to cut the fluff around marketing, tech & productivity & give you a break-down version of things that impact our lives.

The first video on the channel is about- Top Digital marketing roles in 2023.

I have discussed 3 things in this video:

• Top digital marketing roles in 2023

• Top 3 highest paying jobs and

• The best way to start a digital marketing career

I share this news with you with the hope that you will like the video and subscribe to the channel. And show the same love that you have shown to these newsletters.

Let’s get to today’s topic.

Today a brand is not differentiated on the basis of product, design or functionality.

Not price either.

Not simplistic and copycat promotions.

It takes a much deeper sense of differentiation for a brand to take the journey from Good to Great.

And this is where marketing kicks in.

If the marketing function is tasked with clear expectations and empowered to bring them about, it can indeed make a huge, positive difference.

To bring this difference about, we are seeing ‘The rise of more rounded marketing roles‘. Some people also call these- ‘T-shaped marketers.‘

Traditionally marketing has always been looked at as a cost centre in organisations.

No matter how deep of an impact marketing function makes on a brand, sales or operations. It was always a cost centre.

This changed when Digital kicked in.

Organisations realised the importance of being digitally savvy. And also looked at Digital as a business medium.

This is when marketing started playing a dual role in most organisations. Being a support function for all the other sales channels and being responsible for P&L for digital.

When Digital marketing was still taking shape in India in 2013-14, a lot of organisations were not sure how to structure the new marketing roles. Where to fit in the new digital skill sets.

And because the Marketing leaders at these organisations were traditional, a lot of them did not pay heed to digital skill sets. Thinking it’s just a faff & will pass.

However, a few years down the line a few organisations and startups started leveraging Digital taking away the audience from traditional players.

It took years for incumbent organisations to realise that a digital business is different from a traditional business in at least 6 ways:

1. the customer is younger and more demanding;

2. there is an explosion of data,

3. the velocity of change is unprecedented,

4. technology is not a support function, it’s at the ‘core‘;

5. a ‘right the first time’ approach does not work, and last,

6. digital problems are highly interdisciplinary.

Leaving incumbents with the realisation of the importance of digital media.

Also, the strategy-to-execution cycle has changed from what has been identified. Strategy now lies not in looking forward but in looking back from execution especially because the ‘right the first time‘ approach does not work on digitally.

It is these shifts that led to the need for more-rounded roles in Marketing.

Talent: Finding talent which can adapt to this dynamic world of digital is a challenge. Should organisations try re-skilling existing talent or just hire fresh talent? Creating a small but distinctively upgraded talent pool can be a huge multiplier. However, getting talent in a hot talent market is just the beginning, organisations still need to plan for their development, adoption into the organisation, and their retention.

Hence organisations have made a paradigm shift to more rounded roles in marketing.

The market is hot and will continue to be hot for foreseeable future for people who are in product marketing roles, Social media roles, Growth roles, and Acquisition roles.

This is what the new marketing team structure looks like for most enterprise businesses:

Here are the roles that need more than just base skills to make an impact (rounded roles):

If you look at the product marketing role, it is stationed under the Head of Brand marketing. But what good is a product manager if she doesn’t understand the cost to acquire a customer and how frequently are people using the product that she is managing? What behaviour users are depicting while using her product?

Similarly, Social media managers’ lives revolve not only around organic content but also trackability in the form of engagement rate & followership the content is getting. Today a social media manager is also expected to grow website traffic from social media channels.

SEO needs to have an understanding of website UI/UX to further boost conversions.

UI/UX needs to have a background of the problem statement they try to solve with their work, to come up with a relevant and more informed hypothesis. If a user is coming on the website then what are different intent triggers so that a UI/UX person can build the right flows.

CRO (Conversion rate optimisation) manager role revolves around Performance, SEO, UI/UX & content. A CRO will need help from these profiles to get the right traffic on the website and trigger the right messaging. Delivering quality experience to improve conversion rates is equally critical.

All these roles cut across each other. A person can start their career in one of these roles, but the more she leverages another’s skill, the more she uses soft skills, better are the chances for that person to fit in a senior role.

Remember, in marketing, you will typically start your career from one profile and then grow horizontally before growing vertically.

This means, if you start your career as an SEO, and you understand how to leverage content, CRO, and UI/UX to convert users better (horizontal growth), there are higher chances of you becoming the next ‘Head of growth‘ or ‘Head of acquisition.’ (vertical growth).

I see many individuals today who are working in a single role for more than 5 years. While there is nothing wrong with it but they minimize the chances of learning new skills and becoming a more rounded marketer.

Future CMOs will be made on the basis of how quickly they are able to grow horizontally first and then vertically. The individuals who would be expertise in leveraging all the digital skill sets to make an impact will rise above others.

And we are already seeing early trends of it.

An example of this is Shreya Sachdev, Head of Marketing at PUMA. She completed her post-graduation in 2015 and rose to become the marketing head of PUMA in 2020.

There are many such young individuals who start from one skill, grow horizontally and then vertically in a matter of a handful of years.

• The new breed of marketers and CMOs will be like Leonardo Da Vinci. They will be multifaceted and multitalented, excelling at the art, science, and technology of marketing. They will be both left-brained and right-brained, creative and analytical

• The new breed of marketers and CMOs will be primarily business leaders who understand the business. They deeply appreciate how their business makes money. They will be true general managers, with deep marketing expertise, as opposed to being pure marketing specialists excelling at 1 skill.

• The new breed of marketers and CMOs will be strong leaders. They will demonstrate confidence and assertiveness that comes not only out of personality but from understanding the business dynamics along with having a command over the field of marketing. They will be able to connect the dots between the two.

• The new breed of marketers and CMOs understand the basics of human psychology, sociology, and anthropology. They grasp every one of the 4Ps of marketing. They know, in-depth, about pricing strategies and price elasticity, brand positioning, purchase channels, advertising models, agency workings, packaging designs, how promotions work, how to negotiate sponsorships and partnerships and leverage them fully, how to inspire and drive marketing, how to measure ROIs of their campaigns in general and marketing investment overall, how to manage the marketing processes most effectively.

• The new breed of marketers and CMOs will be technologically savvy. They aren’t necessarily deep subject matter experts, but at least they have enough comprehension and working knowledge to be able to ask the right questions and see through the fluff in the answers.

You have to aspire to become a marketer with the above traits. And if you are already on the path of using your core skill and leveraging other skills to make an impact, you are on the right path. Sooner than later, the right opportunity will find you.

That’s it for today, folks!

I wish you the very best in your journey to becoming a more rounded professional. Because the future belongs to them.

I have also opened up slots for 1:1 project briefing calls.

Cheers,

Apurv

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